Happy New Year and Veganuary

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Today I am celebrating 12 years of veganism and as I celebrate my veganniversary, Mr Alien is starting Veganuary. YAY! I suspect a few of us share a veganniversary and as someone about embark on Veganuary, I asked my Mr Alien, AKA Simon, to say a few words about why he’s doing this. 

Hi all, a bit of a different blog post today from Sal’s other half. As I’m sure some of you know Sal married an omnivore and for the last five years I’ve been quite happy with that…..well I say quite happy but I stopped eating Pork, Lamb, Duck and fish as it didn’t seem right. Then last year I ended up in hospital for a week, came out of hospital and had a recovery period of a few months. I had found that dairy used to make me feel claggy in the throat, so I experimented with different types and found that filtered milk didn’t make me feel so claggy, so I moved to that. However, I still felt flat, lethargic and had started to feel bad when I thought about the animals that were being used in my food. So before Christmas, I had the following conversation with Sal:

ME: “you know, I think I am going to give Veganuary a try”.

Sal: “Really, or are you just saying that”

ME: “No I think I’m going to go for it”

Sal: “OK well think about it then”

So I did think about it and the more I looked into it and the benefits it could have, the more it seemed the sensible decision to make. I even asked comedian and Vegan, Michael Legge (@michaellegge on Twitter - if you’re not following the Do The Right Thing Podcast you should; it’s brilliant) what he would suggest, (not really expecting any answer at all let alone a serious answer) but to his credit he suggested the following:

“Buy a decent flask, so when travelling you’ll have a readymade food source from home, as the first few months will be finding out what will be convenient for where you are and buy wet wipes.” *

(*I’m condensing and paraphrasing the tweets into one sentence!)

So here I am day 1 of Veganuary; I’ve had toast with peanut butter and tea and coffee with no dairy in them (Oatly as the replacement). We have a meal with in-laws later so I have found a pub with a vegan menu and we’re going there and I’ll be spending the next couple of days using the book  “Appetite for reduction” as a guide for vegan meals to eat that are healthy as well.

I can’t guarantee I will stay vegan after January, but I am determined to take it one day at a time and complete Veganuary. I strongly suspect that at the end of it I may well be off meat completely, as I have been feeling that way for a while now so let’s see where I am at the end of the month.

Simon

I guess this means I now have to share my booja booja chocolate with him? Shit.

Is anyone else doing Veganuary? if you are or if you are already vegan and have some advice for Simon, let me know in the comments or come talk to me on Instagram or Simon or I on Twitter (@SimonJamesEllis / @sal_on_toast)

Sal

xXx

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So how was everyone's new year's eve? How did you celebrate? My friend came over, we had a couple of cosmopolitans, some crisps and watched Police Academy, Goonies and Spaceballs (<3 80s movies!). I managed to stay awake till Pizza the Hut ate himself but was dozing off before midnight. Luckily my friend set her alarm so we could watch the countdown. We cheers'd, hugged, said happy new year then went to sleep. hahaha.

New Year's Day was my veganniversary - 2 glorious years! Last year I baked some blondies to celebrate but I wasn't really in the mood yesterday so I just had leftover chocolate log from xmas! hahah. Happy veganniversary to anyone else who celebrated yesterday too, I know there's a few of us!

Onto the food pics. I don't have any from chrimbo - I forgot to take my memory card with me and now I can't find the cable to get the pics off my camera, DOH! So instead, here are some from Wednesday. We went down to Brighton for the day and had dinner in Terre a Terre. My bro let me take some pics on his iPhone..... The food was amazing, even better than last time!

We started with a plate of the Lavash Tanoor (fried lavash bread with baba ganoush) that we shared between us but I didn't get a pic.

This was my bro's dinner - a rosti with spinach and cheese and an egg on it.


Lara's (my bro's girlfriend) - Saltimbocca, which was mushrooms and polenta I think.

My mum's - she had the Tandoori Tattie (the tofu one). It was really yummy, I'm having that next time!

And mine (my dad had the same) - The Sodden Socca - chickpea pancakes with a couple of different sauces, very yum.

OK back on to my food. For xmas, my awesome bro and his awesome girlfriend got me a waffle maker!! SQUEEEEEEEEE!!!! Here it is, in its shiny new glory!

Inside shot....


Well obviously I need practice folks! I used the first waffle recipe in Vegan brunch, I had to sub a couple of things that I didn't have. But I followed the salt and baking powder etc proportions correctly but I found the batter way too salty. The first batch, I obviously didn't put enough batter on - as you can see.


But the second batch, not only did I forget to re-oil the plates but I put too much in and resulted in this disaster. :-(


So I need to keep playing around with batters and amounts. Like I say they were a little salty but once I covered them in mango sauce (whizzed up frozen mango, soya cream and golden syrup) they were not bad at all!

Last night's dinner was seitan. I cleared out my little freezer drawer the other day to make room for ice and I found a seitan sausage, so I defrosted it. I had it with some roasted veg - peppers, onions and asparagus - cuz that's what I had in the fridge. And some soft polenta. YUM.


And dinner another night - noodles with mushrooms, bok choy and smoked tofu. Quick, simple and yummy.

That's it for now, hopefully I'll have more successful waffle pics next time!

Laterz
xXx

The first one of 2009

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! I can't believe it's 2009 already. I trust everyone had a good NY's Eve? Mine was a bit lame but it was nice to be with my friends.

Midnight also marked my one year veganniversary! A whole year of being vegan and I've loved every second of it! I decided I needed to bake something extra awesome to celebrate - more on that in a bit though, I have a couple of food pics....

Yesterday's brekkie, pancakes with lots of cinnamon added to the batter and maple syrup.

Today's dinner. It is rare that I fancy salad but today I did. I made the country fried tofu from Hot Damn & Hell Yeah (that stuff is awesome) and a salad out of chinese leaf, mushrooms, cucumber, carrots and a simple vinaigrette.

And now the important stuff - the baking. I wanted to use some of the white chocolate I got for christmas and some peanut butter so I made blondies. I got the idea for swirling peanut butter into brownies from the Barefoot Contessa! But this is my veganified version. They are a bit more effort than regular blondies, but I don't apologise for that, cuz they are tasty as fook!

White Chocolate Peanut Butter Swirl Blondies

Dry Ingredients:

1½ cups/240g plain flour
¼ cup/4 tbsp cornflour
1 tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

¼ tsp salt

Wet Ingredients:

1 cup/250ml unsweetened non-dairy milk
1 tsp vinegar
¾ cup (packed)/135g light brown muscovado sugar

2 flax eggs (2 tbsp ground flax seeds whisked with 6 tbsp cold water)

½ cup/125ml soya yoghurt

¼ cup/60ml sunflower or rapeseed (canola) oil

1½ tsp vanilla extract

Extras:

30g/about ¼ cup vegan white chocolate, chopped or chips

1/3 cup/6 heaped tbsp natural smooth peanut butter
1 heaped tsp cocoa powder

Method:

Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas 4.

Mix together the milk and vinegar and set aside. Whisk together flax seeds and water and set aside.

Seive together the dry ingredients and mix well. Whisk the rest of the wet ingredients into the milk mixture and then add the flax eggs and whisk thoroughly - don't combine the two just yet.

If need be, stir the oils back into the peanut butter and if it's not soft enough to drop off the spoon in blobs* then heat it very gently over a low flame, stirring until it softens a little.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and mix well until just combined, don't overmix. Remove 1/2 a cup of the blondie batter and put into a small bowl. Mix the cocoa powder in and set aside.

Toss the chocolate chips in a tsp or so of flour and then fold them into the batter and pour into a lightly oiled 8x8 baking tin. Then drop blobs of the chocolate batter and peanut butter over the surface. Like this.....

Then take a skewer and swirl swirly swirl...

Bake until the blondies are raised and cracked on top and a skewer comes out still a bit soft. It took 25 minutes in my oven. Leave it to cool in the tin and then I used a spatula to cut the blondies into 12 and remove them from the tin to cool on a wire rack. Here they are straight out the oven....

*sorry for shit description!! hehe

Cooking to: Heroes Series 2 - I'm catching up so I can start watching S3 that I've been V+ing.